NOVEMBRE
For as many years as I have been in love with Metal, its always brought me that social isolation that comes with swimming against the tide of crap music spewed forth by commercial radio and trend-setting evils of inept entities like MTV. So my collection has been getting bigger, I'm getting older and I'll be damned if I have more than a handful of albums I can stick in my player and have spinning when a very non-Metal young lady of a date shows up at my apartment for drinks. I mean, how much success do you expect a guy to have when his prospective hottie shows at the door and you've got the likes of SUFFOCATION blasting? You can kiss the romance goodbye and the only thing you'll be banging at the end of the night is your own head. Well, now I have just one more little piece of Metal music to seduce my lady friends to. Well almost....NOVEMBRE hail from Italy; land of great food, great architecture, great historical setting (the chicks ain't half bad either since we're on the subject) and now some excellent Metal emerging these past few years. Of the artists I have been privy to hear thus far from that part of Europe, this is by far the most accomplished. NOVEMBRE are hardly new and I feel rightfully shamed for not having discovered them earlier but with Novembrine Waltz, I shall embark on a crusade to fill the gap with their prior releases. I can sum up this review now with a word to OPETH fans: Get this because your admiration for progressive Death/Ambient Metal depends on it. Once in a while I come across an album that warrants a passing comparison with the Swedish gods but this likeness carries more weight than any other release I have heard. However, what I am more than delighted to report is that as much OPETHisms that crop up in NOVEMBRE's music, they truly are their own unique, musical entity.
The album is a complex clockwork of alternating transitions that see the band taking influential components from OPETH but tying them in more heavily with absorbing melodic Metal and saturating it all in a thick pall of classy ambiance. What is so striking about Novembrine Waltz is its incredible diversity of style. As many times as I have listened to this album (hardly a day goes by I don't here it once or twice) over the past couple of weeks, I have seemingly never heard the same song twice. That meaning, there is come exotic, preservative ingredient in the band's music that keeps it extremely fresh and memorable but amazingly new sounding no matter how many times you hear it. Perhaps its the fact that the complexity of transitions and the changing ebb and flow of the songs keep it unfamiliar. Whatever it is, its to the degree that every time I have listened to Novembrine Waltz it sounds as new as the first time I heard it and I seem to pick out something somewhere that I did not recognize the times previous. That is a truly remarkable feat to accomplish for a band and few can say they've achieved that level of shining longevity in their music. What this is all leading to is me proclaiming what I don't throw around loosely, that being the word 'genius'. For NOVEMBRE I think that term applies. They've taken Rock, Jazz, Ambient Metal, Melodic Metal, Death Metal and created some gorgeous yet powerfully somber hybrid that is rich in scope and depth and completely defies classification. Let's just call it Progressive, Ambient Death Metal for simplicity's sake (actually the Death Metal component in the music is only really found in the growling vocals which account for about 30-40 percent of the album's singing content).
Specifics: Awesome, sparkling production, both superior clean and Death Metal vocals, both resembling OPETH quite a lot, endless transitions and tempo variation that employ beautiful acoustical and electric guitars, rolling drum fills and nice sharp, melodic lead playing. Absolute attention to detail is the hallmark of this album and I have no problem stating that NOVEMBRE are on par with OPETH in virtually every respect. I never thought I would be able to make that statement. In fact, I will take it one step further - NOVEMBRE are even more diverse than OPETH. That is not to suggest I like one more than the other because OPETH are worthy of their own religion but I am totally infatuated with Novembrine Waltz at the present time and cannot wait to jump into this band's discography and get caught up.
Novembrine Waltz is one of the top albums in Progressive/Whatcha-ma-callit Metal I have ever heard and that means you must have it without the slightest hesitation. Something tells me I will be listening to this album the day I collect my pension. Its that good, really.
